


Awful Heart to Song

by beautlilies



Series: Any Thrill Will Do [2]
Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, JaliceWeek20, Jaliceweek, Soulmate AU, also promised myself that i would finish it, i know lilia would have wanted me to, with our favorite example of soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:21:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27105634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautlilies/pseuds/beautlilies
Summary: whatever you lose, your soulmate finds
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale
Series: Any Thrill Will Do [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975681
Comments: 17
Kudos: 34
Collections: Jalice Week 2020





	Awful Heart to Song

Jasper has forsaken all thought of religion by 1903.

The interim is lost in the endless cycle of dependency and an inner indecisiveness that is as broad and as uncertain as the night sky. His soul seeks safety in other people, seeks shelter in the flames that dance across his skin, hang from the end of his hair. There are no real, happy times - the last glimmer of a chance stolen with the last of his humanity, fleeing with his only friend. In its place roots the depravity and malicious nature that is far too easy to awaken, and much harder to chase away in those raw and desperate moments for release, for safety - for salvation.

There is no explanation for it - not the inevitability, the unpredictability, the physics of it all. He’s too jaded and too logical to believe that a higher power that lives among the clouds and is responsible for every minute facet of this world. It’s too simple of an explanation, to think that someone would create a world where mythical creatures run rampant and soulmates live in naive harmony. He spends years trying to understand, pick apart the pieces to unravel the mystery of how an object can simply appear and disappear, fated to one person and only one person.

Maria finds it first. A ribbon of ice blue, silk and soft and smells faintly of childhood, crumpled between the faded yellow pages of his newest journal. “Souvenir? I thought you did not like to keep those.”

He’s afraid and he’s not sure why. “She was the sweetest I’ve ever had.”

Maria smiles. “How wonderful. Careful not to lose it among the young ones. We don’t need a repeat of 1874. They still talk about it, you know.”

Jasper burns the ribbon that night. He is no longer religious, but he prays that there had been a mistake. No soul is deserving of him as a soulmate.

It stops after that. He thinks that the Universe fixed itself; the error has been recognized.

In 1905, Jasper finds a stuffed animal lumped among his belongings. It’s dirty and loved, the fur of the rabbit without its hue. An eye is missing and Jasper finds it odd that the Universe would send it to him today; he tore out the eye of one hostage during a brutal interrogation process. On the foot of the rabbit, he finds  _ Alice  _ inked in bold, blocky letters.

He likes the sound of her name rattling around in his brain. He reasons with himself that if this is truly his soulmate, this is the one item he will keep from them. Jasper won’t ever allow himself in Alice’s life - under no circumstances can he ever bring someone with a name as lovely as  _ Alice _ .

Jasper keeps it hidden. It smells of sunshine and freshly mowed grass and Jasper tries to imagine what Alice could be doing. Only on the worst days does Jasper allow himself to pull it out, to run his calloused hands over its matted fur and missing eye. It becomes his favorite thing faster than he will admit to himself.

The rate to which Alice loses things increases rapidly 1917. A shoe lost, heel broken off and mud along the soft fabric. A hairbrush. Loose papers, documentation of life and death. Letters. Letters to  _ him _ .

They are never too long, just small anecdotes. She had torn off the corner of her page and had asked him outright if he even reads her little messages. He thinks they’re pleading, at least, he  _ hopes  _ they are - that she wants him as much as he could want her if given the chance. 

_ You must be very organized to never lose things. _

_ I miss my hairbrush. I hope you are keeping it clean for me. _

_ I can’t decide: gardenias or daisies? _

_ I’m starting to wonder if there is no one out there for me.  _

_ How fitting is it for someone as odd as me to have not one person. _

He thinks about responding, to give her the peace of mind he has given her. But he can hear Maria not too far away, struggles with the inevitability of Peter and Charlotte. His arm still stings, the back of his neck on fire with fresh wounds. Jasper crinkles the papers and hides them the best he can.

When he leaves, the rabbit in his bag and his future undecided, Jasper thinks he’s never been more free. 

He also thinks that when Alice flits down the stairs of their tiny home in 1949, the rabbit in her hand and the compass he lost somewhere on the way to Philadelphia in the other, and wonders if something more permanent is in the cards for them.

**Author's Note:**

> may come back to this and expand at a later point


End file.
